Maribou State at Motion, Bristol

After several years on the periphery, London production two-piece Maribou State are edging closer towards the nerve-centre of UK electronic music. Their debut album Portraits was released in June last year, and they’ve been playing a number of high profile sets, as well as using their live band at some performances. Most notably inSYNC caught the pair at Glastonbury for an excellent late night DJ set, and at Reading in the afternoon for a chilled live band session.

Although Maribou State have played a lot of live sets in recent months, they still never stray too far from their producing space in the studio. They always lean towards the warmer, synth-heavy house sound, but that only makes the pair evermore unique in what they produce. They use the ebbs and flows of the modern dance floor to create tracks centred around atmosphere and mood, as well as melody and tone.

On this occasion we were back in Bristol’s famous ‘super club’ Motion. Maribou State brought a state of calm to an otherwise dark, techno dominated, night. Their chilled tracks, mainly taken from their Portraits album, were reflected in the crowd. In a ‘superclub’ like Motion you can often find yourself bashing shoulder to shoulder with a sweaty twenty-something who can’t help but exclaim how amazing his night is going. But, this wasn’t the case here. A mutual sense of appreciation bounced around – especially when euphoric beats from songs like ‘The Clown’ and ‘Rituals’ echoed down the tunnel.

I’m not 100% sure the audio set up reflected the nature of the duo’s set per say– the speakers seemed insistent on heavy bass no matter what the pair were playing. This, however, certainly didn’t take away from the set at all though. Maribou State proved once again to be a highlight of what was an already impressive line up. It would be interesting to see the contrast between their DJ sets and a live performance.

Maribou State are playing at a fair few festivals this year and have a sold out show at KOKO in London next week – we hope they play some of their new EP; Portraits Outakes.